Weill Cornell Medical College and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons have awarded The Mortimer D. Sackler, M.D. Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Developmental Psychobiology to Dr. Fernando Nottebohm of The Rockefeller University for his seminal work on neurons in songbirds.
"I am humbled to have been chosen for this prestigious honor," says Dr. Nottebohm, the Dorothea L. Leonhardt Professor and head of the Laboratory of Animal Behavior at The Rockefeller University. "This prize is crucially important for raising the awareness of and support for research in developmental psychobiology. I am pleased, too, that it recognizes how the study of song learning in birds has contributed to this still young and exciting field."
Dr. Nottebohm spoke about his work at Weill Cornell on April 26 and at the New York State Psychiatric Institute of Columbia University on April 27.
Dr. Nottebohm's research has offered some of the first irrefutable evidence that new nerve cells are constantly born in an adult vertebrate brain. His work with songbirds was also the first to establish an animal model for studying the neurobiology of vocal learning and its relation to the culling and recruiting of brain cells. He showed that brain pathways for vocalization emerge late in development, when many new cells are added as birds learn their songs. This process is highly sensitive to hormones and social experience and continues into adulthood.
"By identifying the birth, migration and differentiation of new brain cells and showing that they are incorporated into the existing circuits of juvenile and adult songbirds and how this relates to ongoing behavior, Dr. Nottebohm has raised new possibilities in how we think about the brain, its development, repair and regeneration," says Dr. B.J. Casey, director of the Sackler Institute and the Sackler Professor of Developmental Psychobiology at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Dr. Nottebohm says that he expects even greater scientific breakthroughs will be born out of this work.
"When we thought of aging we thought of the whole body aging at once," Dr. Nottebohm says. "Now we can look and see that this neuron is 3 months old and the bird is 8 years old. How does this neuron differ from older ones? How does it behave? I expect revolutionary things to come from people looking at that."
Born in Buenos Aires, Dr. Nottebohm joined Rockefeller in 1967 as assistant professor. He has previously been honored with the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, the Karl Spencer Lashley Award of the American Philosophical Society, the Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science, the Ipsen Foundation Neuronal Plasticity Prize, the McKnight Foundation Senior Investigator Award in Neuroscience, and the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Health Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Mortimer D. Sackler, M.D. Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Developmental Psychobiology recognizes researchers who have advanced the understanding of the developmental processes of mind, brain and behavior that contribute to normal development, and of the origins of mental illness. The prize aims to foster international cooperation among scientists and promote public understanding of their work. The prize is presented jointly every two years by the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Weill Cornell Medical College.
The award is named in honor of Dr. Mortimer D. Sackler, who died last year. Dr. Sackler coined the term "developmental psychobiology" and did pioneering work on the biological basis of mental illness. In the early 1950s, Dr. Sackler, with his brothers, founded the pharmaceutical company known today as Purdue Pharma. The original prize was a gift in honor of Dr. Sackler's 90th birthday from his seven children, and the prize was endowed in 2009 by a gift from The Mortimer D. Sackler Foundation, Inc.
"It is hard to imagine," Dr. Nottebohm says, "that our awareness of neuronal stem cells and spontaneous neuronal replacement in the adult healthy brain will not influence research aimed at correcting the ravages brought about by stroke and neurodegenerative disorders."
Photography by Amelia Panico.